Mistress of the Empire

by Raymond E. Feist

  She needed a translator. The unmarried girls at a glance all appeared to be under sixteen years of age, too young to have lived at the time of the last war and to have learned any Tsurani. Mara looked through the lamplit ring of faces until she located Ukata's grey head; as she suspected, the chief's wife seemed to be extricating herself for departure.

  'Wait, Lady Ukata,' Mara called, giving the address her own people would award a woman of noble rank. 'I have not properly thanked you for my rescue from the livestock pen, nor have I had the chance to tell your people why I am here.'

  'Thanks are not necessary, Lady Mara,' Ukata replied, turning back. The youngest girl of the company gave way to allow their elder a clear path, until she stood before Mara's chair. 'Our people are not the barbarians that you Tsurani suppose. As a woman who has borne children and seen them die in battle, I understand why our men still hold your kind in hatred. As to why you are here, you may tell that to our high chief at Darabaldi.'

  'If I am allowed to be heard,' Mara responded with a snap of acerbity. 'Your men, you must admit, have short attention spans.'

  Ukata laughed. 'You will be heard.' She patted the Tsurani Lady's hand, her touch calloused but gentle. 'I know the high chief's wife. She is Mirana, and we were raised in the same village, before the raid in which she was taken to wife. She is tough as old rock, and garrulous enough to break the will of any man, even that meat-brains who is her husband. She will see that you are heard, or insult his manhood before his warriors until his sex parts wither from shame.'

  Mara listened with startled surprise. 'You seem very calm when you speak of the raids that take you from home and family,' she observed. 'And do your husbands not beat you for saying uncomplimentary things of them?'

  A flurry of questions from the young girls, and many cries of 'Da? Da?' followed Mara's statement. Ukata gave in and translated. This raised a round of giggles, which quieted as the chief's wife spoke again. 'Raids to win wives are . . . formal . . . a custom in these lands, Lady Mara. They stem from a time when women were even more scarce than now, and a husband established his standing by the age when he successfully stole a wife. Nowadays women are carried off without bloodshed. There is much shouting and pursuit with terrible oaths and threats of retribution, but it is all for show. Once that was not so — the raids in past times were bloody and men died. Now a husband earns his accolades by how far afield he goes to bring home a mate, and how vigorously she was defended by her village. This house for unmarried girls lies deepest inside our defenses. But also, you will note, only girls of an age and an inclination to have a mate come to live here.'

  Mara regarded the ring of young faces, smooth and unmarked yet by life. 'You mean that all of you here want to be taken by strangers?'

  At their look of blank incomprehension Ukata answered in their stead. 'These youngsters watch the lads who visit the village, who spy in turn on the girls.' With a smile she said, 'If they deem a boy is lacking in grace, the girl will scream with conviction, instead of the mock shouts of fear, and the suitor so rejected will be chased away by the fathers of the village. But few young girls would wish to be left when the warriors come naked to raid. To be overlooked is to be considered ugly or blemished. If a girl is not stolen by a raider, the only way she may win a husband is to wait until two suitors come for the same girl, then throw herself on the back of the one who failed, and ride him home without being pushed off!'

  Mara shook her head, mystified by such a strange custom. She had much to learn if she was to gain understanding enough to negotiate for help from these foreigners. Ukata added, 'It is late, and you will be starting out early in the morning. I suggest you allow the girls to show you to a sleeping mat, and that you rest through the night.'

  'I thank you, Lady Ukata.' Mara inclined her head in respect and permitted herself to be led into a small, curtained cubicle that served as sleeping quarters for Thuril girls. The floor was lined with furs, and the small oil lamp left burning showed a drift of yellow hair scattered amid the bedding. Kamlio lay there already, curled motionless on her side. Her fair skin showed no bruises. Relieved that Arakasi's pretty courtesan had taken no harm, Mara gestured to the Thuril girl who lingered that her needs were met. Then, she gratefully slipped off her soiled robe. Clad in her thin silk underrobe, she crawled under the furs, and reached up to extinguish the lamp.

  'Lady?' Kamlio's eyes were open, watching. She had not been asleep at all, but only shamming. 'Lady Mara, what will happen to us?'

  Leaving the lamp alight, Mara snuggled the furs around her chin and studied the girl who regarded her with eyes like luminous jewels. No wonder Arakasi had been overtaken by desire! Kamlio was appealing enough to bewitch any man, with her creamy skin and fine, fair coloring. As badly as the Lady of the Acoma wished to offer reassurance, she knew better than to lie. If her Spy Master had been thawed into discovery of emotion by the allure of this courtesan, what might the Thuril with their tradition of taking women by raiding do to keep her? 'I don't know, Kamlio.' Mara's uncertainty showed through despite her best efforts.

  The ex-courtesan's delicate fingers tightened over the bed furs. 'I don't want to stay among these people.' For the first time when dealing with her personal wishes, her gaze did not shy away when she spoke.

  'What would you do, then?' Mara seized upon the vulnerability that their straits as prisoners had created. 'You are too intelligent to remain in my service as a maid, Kamlio, and too uneducated to assume a post of more responsibility. What would you like to do?'

  Kamlio's green eyes flashed. 'I can learn. Others have risen to rank in your service who were not born to it.' She bit her full lip and after a moment, some of the tension seemed to leave her, as if she let down some inner barrier by expressing ambition. 'Arakasi,' she said uncertainly. 'Why did he insist upon asking you to buy my freedom? Why did you grant his request, if not to leave me to him?'

  Mara briefly shut her eyes. She was too tired for this! One wrong word, one insufficient answer, and she risked all that her Spy Master hoped for happiness. Honesty was her best course, but how to choose the best phrases? Beaten down by a headache and by pain in every muscle - stiff from the day's forced march - the Lady of the Acoma found that in fact Isashani's tact was beyond her. The bluntness she had learned from Kevin of Zun must suffice. 'You remind him of his family, who also were born to a life that did not suit them, and who also never learned how to love.'

  Kamlio's gaze widened. 'What family? He told me that you were all of his family and all of his honor.'

  Mara accepted the burden of that statement, 'I may have become so. But Arakasi was born masterless to a woman of the Reed Life. He never knew the name of his father, and he saw his only sister killed by a lustful man.'

  The courtesan absorbed this news in silence. Watching, fearful that she might have said too much, but unable to stop short, Mara added, 'He wants your freedom from the past, Kamlio. I know him well enough to vow to you this: he would ask you for nothing more than you would give him freely.'

  'You love your husband that way,' Kamlio said, in her words a cutting edge of accusation, as if she distrusted the existence of such relations between a man and a woman.

  'I do.' Mara waited, wishing she could lay her head down and close her eyes, to lose this and all other problems in the oblivion of sleep.

  But Kamlio's need prevented that. She picked nervously at the furs, and in an abrupt change of subject, said, 'Lady, do not leave me here among these Thuril! I beg you. If I were forced to become the wife of such a foreigner, I would never find out who I am, what sort of life would please me. I think I would never understand the meaning of the freedom you have given me.'

  'Have no fear, Kamlio,' Mara said, losing her battle against her overwhelming exhaustion. 'If I leave this land at all, I will bring all of my people out with me.'

  As if she could trust this reassurance with her life, Kamlio reached out and snuffed the light. After that, Mara could only suppose that the girl shared no more wor
ds in confidence, for the Lady of the Acoma slept without dreams in the close, herb-scented cubicle.

  When morning came, Lady Mara and her servant woman found themselves well treated to a warm bath in the women's quarters, followed by a breakfast of fresh breads and querdidra cheese. Kamlio appeared pale but composed. Yet Mara noted a fragility to her manner that she believed stemmed from worry rather than bitterness. Outside the hut, a great commotion of shouting and laughter issued from the vicinity of the village square, but Mara could not make out the cause through the blurry, translucent windows of oiled hide. When she inquired, the young women who were her hostesses gave her blank stares. Without Ukata present to translate, little else could be done but endure through the simple meal in politeness until an escort of highlander warriors arrived at the door and demanded that the two Tsurani women come out.

  Kamlio whitened. Mara touched her hand in reassurance, then raised her chin high and stepped outside.

  A wagon waited by the low stair beyond the door. It had high sides woven of withe, and was drawn by two querdidra and the recalcitrant donkey. Its scrawny grey hide was flecked with spittle from the six-legged beasts' spite, and in vain it tried to kick at the traces to retaliate. The querdidra blinked their absurdly long lashes and wrinkled their lips as if laughing.

  Tied to the wagon were Mara's warriors. They did not smell of the dung that had been their last night's camp, but were clean, if drenched. Lujan, as he saw his Lady descend the stair, looked flushed with some inward satisfaction, and Saric was stifling a smile. Startled by her warriors' neat appearance, Mara looked further and realised that the Thuril highlanders who swaggered about on guard detail were eyeing her captive retinue with what seemed a newfound respect.

  Suspect though she might that somehow the pandemonium she had heard through the walls of the house might be connected, she had no chance to inquire. The Thuril warriors closed around, and she and Kamlio were bundled up over the wagon's crude backboard into a bed lined with straw. The withe rose up on either side, too tightly woven for Mara to see out. The warriors lashed the tailgate firmly closed. Captives still, the women felt the jolt as the drover leaped up and gathered the reins, and then the creak of withe and wheels as he slapped his team with his goad and hastened them forward.

  The donkey and the querdidra pulled badly together. The wagon swayed and jolted over ruts, and the straw smelled of livestock, taken, as it was, from some goodman's byre.

  Kamlio looked so sick with fear that Mara bade her lie down in the straw. She offered the girl her overrobe, for the wind cut down off the heights in chilly gusts. 'I will not see you abandoned, Kamlio,' she assured. 'You did not come here to become some rough Thuril's wife.'

  Then, too restless to sit still, Mara leaned against the withe on the side nearest to Lujan and demanded to know how her warriors had gotten their soaking.

  As before, the Thuril guard set over them did not care whether their captives talked. Lujan was permitted to step close to the painted spokes of the wheel and answer his mistress all he liked.

  'We complained that we did not care to march into their capital smelling of dung,' the Acoma Force Commander said, his voice deep with choked-back amusement. 'So they allowed us to go under guard to bathe in the river.' Now a chuckle escaped Lujan's control. 'Of course, our armor and clothing were soiled, so we stripped to clean that also. This caused a great commotion among the highlanders. Iayapa said it was because they do not go naked except to battle. There was much pointing and shouting. Then someone called out in bad Tsurani that we were no sport for insults, being unable to understand the rasping grunts these folk call a language.' Here Lujan paused.

  Mara leaned her cheek against the creaking withe. 'Go on.'

  Lujan cleared his throat. Plainly, he was still having difficulty suppressing amusement. 'Saric took up that challenge, shouting to Iayapa to translate everything, no matter how ugly the words were, or how obscene.' The wagon jolted over a particularly bad rut, and Lujan broke off his narrative, presumably to jump across. 'Well, the words got very personal indeed. We were told by these Thuril how we got all of our battle scars. If they are to be believed, the women of the Reed Life in our land are practiced at putting our best soldiers to rout with their ; fingernails. Or our sisters all lie with dogs and jigabirds, and we scratched each other with our nails all vying to have the best view.'

  Here Lujan broke off again, this time grimly. Mara gripped the withe tightly enough to whiten her knuckles. The insults Lujan had mentioned were shame enough to a man's honor to require vengeance, and the Lady doubted her Force Commander had repeated the worst slander. Hoarsely, for she was sorrowful and angry that she had brought such brave warriors to such a disgraceful pass, she said, 'This must have been terrible to endure.'

  'Not so terrible.' A toughness like barbarian iron entered Lujan's voice. 'I and the others, we took example from Papewaio, Lady.'

  Mara closed her eyes in remembered pain for brave Pape - who had saved her life many times over, and come as a consequence to wear the black rag of a condemned man for her sake, and then equally for her sake, to forgo the death by his own blade that he had earned, and to live on, his dark headcloth symbolic of a triumph that only his Lady and those who knew him might understand. Lastly, he had died to save her life, in an attack by a Minwanabi enemy. Mara bit her lip, jostled from her remembrance by the sway and jolt of the wagon. She hoped that these warriors, the finest and best of her honor guard, would not suffer the same untimely end. Old Keyoke, her Adviser for War, had taught her well that death in battle on strange soil was not, as old custom held, the best end a warrior could earn.

  'Go on,' she said, hiding the tears in her voice from Lujan.

  Almost, she could imagine her Force Commander's shrug. 'Lady, there is nothing more to tell. Your warriors agreed not to take umbrage at empty words from the Thuril. And the highlanders seemed surprised by this. They called down and asked why we did not bother to defend our honor. And Vanamani called right back that we were your honor, Lady. We would hear no word that was not spoken from your lips, or the lips of an enemy. At that point Saric broke in and added that the Thuril were not enemies, but foreigners, and that the words of such were empty as the howl of wind over stones.' Lujan delivered his last sentence in wry amusement. 'You know, the highlanders stopped slanging us then. Our loyalty impressed them, I think, that we would not be baited, even when under command of a woman who was out of sight and a captive as we were. Iayapa said that many Tsurani in the times of the wars were taunted to take foolish charges, and so were killed off by highlanders hidden in the rocks.'

  'Lujan,' Mara said, her voice tremulous with gratitude despite her wish to seem impassive, 'all of your men are to be commended for their valor. Tell them I said so, as you can.' For each and every one of them had stood firm beyond the call of duty, beyond the tenets of Tsurani culture that held honor above even life. Each of these men had given over their personal honor into her hands. Mara studied her palms, red-marked from her grip on the withe. She prayed to her gods that she would prove worthy of such trust, and not get them all sold into slavery that would be the nadir of dishonor.

  20

  Council

  The hours dragged.

  Confined to the wicker wagon, exposed to buffeting winds and the sun that appeared and disappeared between the clouds that brooded over the highlands, Mara strove to keep her patience. But the uncertainty, and the boisterous shouts of the Thuril escort warriors, wore at her nerves. To pass the time, she asked Iayapa to describe the lands they were crossing. He had little to tell. There were no villages, only a few isolated hamlets clinging to rocky hillsides, surrounded by scrub grazed thin by the herds. Over the purple hills at the horizon larger mountains loomed, rock-crowned where they were not covered by cloud. Darabaldi, the city of the high council of chieftains, was said to lie in the foothills of the great range. When Mara asked Iayapa to inquire on the length of their journey, she received in return only laughter and ribald comment
s. Driven at last to useless exasperation, she turned to teaching Kamlio the calming techniques of meditation she had learned as a temple novice.

  Gods knew, the poor girl might need all the solace she could learn to give herself, before their fates were determined at the hands of these people, Mara thought.

  The highlanders paused only to eat sausage, sour quer-didra cheese, and bread, washed down with a light, sour beer that was surprisingly refreshing with the meal. These breaks were enlivened by loud boasts and sometimes wagers, when warriors would contest at arm wrestling.

  Darkness fell, and fog settled in cold layers over the land. The donkey grew too tired to kick at the querdidra that shared its traces, even if the six-legged beasts still curled their lips at it and spat. Mara curled close to Kamlio for warmth. Perhaps for a while she slept.

  The stars formed a brilliance of pinpoint patterns overhead when she roused to the barking of many dogs. Herd dogs, Iayapa identified, not the larger, heavier breed of hound used for hunting. By the smoke on the air, and the pungent smell of confined livestock, rotting garbage, and curing hides, Mara presumed their party approached a village or larger habitation.

  'Darabaldi,' she received in gruff-voiced reply when she inquired. But when she pressed for information concerning when she might speak with the council of chieftains, her escort returned only coarse comment. 'What does it matter, woman, or are you eager to learn what man will buy you? Maybe you worry that he will be old and have no manhood left in him to rise?'